


I'm a binary code that you cracked long ago

by illuminatedcities



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Backstory, College era, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 06:41:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3926701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illuminatedcities/pseuds/illuminatedcities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quite obviously Harold’s fundamental premise is flawed: It’s not that Nathan isn’t into guys, he’s just not into Harold, specifically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm a binary code that you cracked long ago

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Academia" by Sia.

On Tuesday, Harold opens the door to his dorm room and nearly collides with a second year law student with endless legs and a dazzling smile.

 

“Hey,” she says, wrinkling her freckled nose and turning her head to yell into the room: “See you later, Nathan.”

 

_Of course._

 

“Your thoughts on environmental law were very interesting, Christie,” Nathan calls after her.

 

Christie walks down the corridor in her short skirt, book bag slung over her shoulder, and turns around once to wink at Harold conspicuously.

 

Harold blinks, twice, before getting inside and letting the door fall shut behind him.

 

“Intense study session,” Nathan says, sitting cross-legged on his bed with his hair mussed up and the top three buttons of his shirt undone.

 

“I didn’t realize you were enrolled in law school,” Harold says primly, transferring a stack of pizza cartons from the desk into the trashcan.

 

“I’m broadening my horizons,” Nathan says, giving him that thousand watt smile, leaning back on his elbows on his messed up sheets.

 

Harold can feel the beginning of a headache building behind his temples. He tries very hard not to take in Nathan’s disheveled look and turn it into a vivid picture of Nathan leaning down to make out with his latest conquest; Harold has an extensive collection of mental images of Nathan in various states of undress with female guests, he really doesn’t need to add law school Christie.

 

“And it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that I told you I’d appreciate less overnight guests and more study partners in this room,” Harold says. “Or, even better, no other people at all.”

 

“You were at the library the whole night!” Nathan says, shrugging, as if Harold should expect to be greeted by stunning women if he walked into his own dorm room in bright daylight.

 

Harold tries his best to hold on to the last shred of annoyance, but Nathan is already on his feet and coming over.

 

Even with little sleep and crumpled clothing he looks attractive, that mischievous grin and the confident, relaxed way he holds himself - the way he can make anyone feel like they are the center of his universe.

 

Harold swallows, forcing himself not to look at the exposed skin beneath Nathan’s open collar, the soft blonde hair on his forearms where he has rolled up his shirtsleeves.

 

Having a ridiculous, completely inappropriate crush on your roommate is bad enough, but of course it would be Harold’s luck that his roommate would also be his best, very straight friend.

 

The fact that Nathan is standing right next to him and looking like he got laid rather thoroughly about ten minutes ago doesn’t help much, either.

 

“There is a lecture at eight, in case you remember,” Harold says, his voice pitched a little too high to his own ears, and shoves his folder with lecture notes at Nathan in an act of self-defense.

 

“You can have those if you want, I’m late for Advanced Mathematics anyway.”

 

“You’re smarter than every TA in there, and probably most of the professors,” Nathan says, swatting Harold’s shoulder with the papers. “Why bother?”

 

“Not everyone can spend their days studying environmental law,” Harold says, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

 

Nathan laughs, that irresistible sound that always tugs at Harold’s insides.

  
Harold can feel the last bit of his bad mood melt away easily beneath the warmth of Nathan’s smile. He is so _screwed._

 

“Let me get dressed, I want to watch you be right about everything, this sounds like fun. Bonus points if you make some poor kid cry,” Nathan says, pulling his shirt over his head.

 

Harold makes a point out of tidying up a very neat stack of notebooks, absolutely not looking at Nathan’s naked chest and back.

 

“He was completely wrong about the Brouwer fixed point theorem,” Harold says petulantly.

 

“And we can’t have that, can we?” Nathan says, buttoning his shirt and winking at Harold.

 

It’s going to be a very long semester.

 

–

 

Harold has barely spent two hours in the computer lab on Friday night between screens glowing softly in the half-dark and the calming hum of computer servers when he realizes that he left his thermos with tea in his dorm room.

 

He sighs, rubbing his eyes, trying to calculate how much he can get done before he has to take a break again.

 

Coffee would kick his mind into overdrive, and what the vending machine produces can barely be called tea anyway, so he grabs his bag and makes his way back over the campus, the lampposts flickering into life on his way.

 

Harold can hear music playing from outside the door when he puts his key in the lock, which means that Nathan is staying on campus for the weekend and will probably give him a lecture about proper ways to spend a Friday night (none of which include getting any actual work done).

 

Harold walks in and drops his bag on the floor in shock, a hand still on the door handle.

 

There are two half-empty bottles of beer on the table, the lights are dimmed gently, and until two seconds ago Nathan had been making out with someone who rather decidedly does not look like law school Christie, if mostly for the fact that the person in question is a guy.

 

Quite obviously Harold’s fundamental premise is flawed: It’s not that Nathan isn’t into guys, he’s just not into _Harold_ , specifically.

 

Harold doesn’t recognize him, he looks like an art history major with his pretentious sneakers and ridiculous scarf and his head full of black curls, and Harold fervently wishes for a fire alarm or the ability to spontaneously combust.

 

“Harold,” Nathan says, and the expression of mortification is so unusual on his face that it takes Harold a second to pin it down.

 

“I’m going to –“ Harold says and flees, leaving both his bag and his thermos, walking down the hallway and out of the building before he even realizes.

 

He walks aimlessly around campus for two hours before spending another two staring at an empty screen in the computer lab.

 

When he gets back to the dorm room, the lights are out and Nathan is asleep, the sound of his breathing like the ticking of a clock in the darkness.

 

Harold climbs into bed and stares at the ceiling.

 

Just when Harold had thought that he had managed to achieve maximum levels of pathetic, he realizes that being helplessly in love with your bisexual roommate and best friend must be a new low.

 

–

 

Harold manages to avoid Nathan for the rest of the weekend, eating his meals alone on a bench off-campus and hiding in the cramped ground floor of the library of the Languages and Arts department, one of the last places Nathan would ever think to look for him.

 

With the beginning of the new week his stealth tactic becomes more challenging, but Harold sets his alarm to five thirty and is out of the door before Nathan even got out of bed.

 

Harold surely would have managed to get through the entire Monday without having to face whatever conversation they were certainly going to have, had it not been for Nathan waiting in the hallway after Harold’s Programming Language Seminar.

 

“You and me, dorm room, now,” Nathan says, and when Harold opens his mouth to protest, Nathan gives him a look that conveys quite clearly what will happen if Harold keeps up the deflection strategies.

 

Harold walks behind him, trying to think of a way to talk to Nathan without doing any actual talking, and coming up blank.

 

When Harold closes the door of their room behind him, Nathan looks at him, his face all soft and sad.

 

For a horrifying moment Harold thinks that he must have given himself away at some point, that Nathan will give him some kind of pep talk about how someday there will be someone for Harold who will care back.

 

“Look, I didn’t think I’d ever have to say that,” Nathan says, tiredly rubbing at his face as if he hasn’t slept at all in the last few days, “but if you want to get a different roommate next semester, or even now, I get it.”

 

Harold stares at him.

 

“I – what?”

 

While Harold has no illusions about Nathan’s feelings towards him, he wouldn’t have expected him to be _cruel_ \- Harold might not have made a graceful exit, but he has been keeping his unrequited emotions in check for more than a year now, and he doesn’t want to stop rooming with Nathan, even if that means watching Nathan make out with half of the student body.

 

Nathan presses his lips together.

 

“I know I could have been more open about me being interested in guys and girls, but I just - I didn’t think it would be an issue, so when you reacted like you did I figured I had probably misjudged,” Nathan says. “So, yeah, if this is a thing that bothers you, maybe we should look for new roommates sometime soon.”

 

“Okay, Nathan, no.” Harold says, because clearly this conversation has taken more than one wrong turn at some point. “Is that what you think?”

 

He sounds positively enraged, because how a brilliant person like Nathan can draw such a ridiculous conclusion is beyond him.

 

“Do you actually believe that I am some kind of narrow-minded homophobe whose opinion about you is now changed forever and who would refuse to keep living with you?”

 

He can feel the inappropriate laughter bubbling up inside his chest before he can stop himself, and sits down in his desk chair.

 

This can’t be happening.

 

“No, Harold, of course I don’t, I know you, if you were a bigoted jerk, I think I may have realized by now. I just don’t know what to think, okay? You’ve been avoiding me for days, and with the way you ran out of the room the other night you kind of have to give me an explanation here because I genuinely don’t –“

“Maybe I don’t like to be taunted with what I can’t have!” Harold snaps.

 

Nathan stares at him as if Harold had just declared the end of the world.

 

“But you don’t – you don’t want people, Harold, you barely tolerate them most of the time.” Something complicated happens on Nathan’s face. “I thought you minded that I spent time with other people that I could have spent with you, I didn’t–“

 

“I don’t want people,” Harold says, his heart beating all the way into his throat.

  
If he is going to do something stupid, he should probably do it now. “I just want you.”

 

There is a moment of stunned silence, and then Nathan’s face does something else that doesn’t look like pity at all, and _oh_ , Harold had it all wrong, he had it all backwards –

 

Suddenly, both of them start moving in the same instant, meeting in the middle with a clumsy kiss.

 

Their teeth are banging together before they find the right angle, Harold’s hands in Nathan’s hair and Nathan’s palms on Harold’s back to pull him even closer.

 

He is kissing Harold with such enthusiasm that it makes Harold’s knees feel shaky and weak beneath him:

 

As it turns out, real Nathan is an even better kisser than fantasy-Nathan.

 

Finally, Harold shoves Nathan back by the shoulders because he’s had about enough of denying himself something that was right in front of him the whole time.

 

He goes to his knees and deftly unbuckles Nathan’s pants.

 

Nathan makes a weak little noise and tries to sit up, and Harold glares at him and says “Just try not to be difficult about something for once,” and Nathan lets his head fall back and grabs fistful of the sheets with both hands when Harold sucks him down, pressing his tongue against the head of Nathan’s cock and making him gasp.

 

Harold is a little overly enthusiastic at first and makes himself cough and nearly gag, and Nathan sits up on his elbows and says: “Harold, Jesus, just - come here,” and pulls him up for more kissing.

 

It’s different this time, sweet and careful, Nathan’s palms against his face, his heart stuttering wildly in his chest where Harold is pressed against him.

 

“We have all the time in the world,” Nathan says, and Harold can’t help himself:

 

He has to believe him.

 

This time it’s easier, with Harold pushing up Nathan’s shirt and kissing his way down his exposed belly, following the light dusting of blonde hair on his skin.

 

Harold shudders at the way Nathan keeps talking to him throughout, _yes_ and _that’s it_ and _god, Harold_ , and when he feels Nathan coming close by his desperate, panting breaths and the way his thighs tense under Harold’s hands, he crawls back up his body to let Nathan push up into his hand, a whimper escaping his lips every time Harold moves his thumb over the head of his cock just _so._

 

Nathan reaches between them to help Harold pull down his pants and underwear, their cocks sliding together between their bodies with delicious friction.

 

“Harold,” Nathan groans, strangled, when Harold wraps a hand around both of their erections.

 

Nathan’s hands tighten on Harold’s shoulders and then he makes a desperate little noise low in his throat and comes, Harold following along shortly after before collapsing on top of Nathan in a spent, boneless heap.

 

They stay like that for a while, catching their breath, Harold burying his face in Nathan’s throat and Nathan stroking nonsense patterns on Harold’s back.

 

“I can’t believe that you were jealous,” Nathan finally says.

 

Harold rolls his eyes even though he knows that Nathan can’t tell.

 

“I wasn’t _jealous_ ,” he says.

 

He can’t see Nathan’s smug smile, but he can imagine it all too well.

 

“Don’t worry, Harold, the only person coming home with me into this room from now on will be you,” Nathan says, pressing a kiss to the top of Harold’s head.

 

Maybe being in love with your roommate and best friend isn’t that bad after all.

 


End file.
